Heavy dye loads on bond paper of various colored inks can lead to bleed and reduction of waterfastness. Bleed, as used herein, is the invasion of one color into another color on paper or other media. This is in contradistinction to uses of the term in the prior art, which tend to define "bleed" in the context of ink of a single color following the fibers of the paper.
Thermal ink-jet printers offer a low cost, high quality, and comparatively noise-free option to other types of printers commonly used with computers. Such printers employ a resistor element in a chamber provided with an egress for ink to enter from a plenum. The plenum is connected to a reservoir for storing the ink. A plurality of such resistor elements are arranged in a particular pattern, called a primitive, in a printhead. Each resistor element is associated with a nozzle in a nozzle plate, through which ink is expelled toward a print medium. The entire assembly of printhead and reservoir comprise an ink-jet pen.
In operation, each resistor element is connected via a conductive trace to a microprocessor, where current-carrying signals cause one or more selected elements to heat up. The heating creates a bubble of ink in the chamber, which is expelled through the nozzle toward the print medium. In this way, firing of a plurality of such resistor elements in a particular order in a given primitive forms alphanumeric characters, performs area-fill, and provides other print capabilities on the medium.
Many inks that are described for use in ink-jet printing are usually associated with non-thermal ink-jet printing. An example of such non-thermal ink-jet printing is piezoelectric ink-jet printing, which employs a piezoelectric element to expel droplets of ink to the medium. Inks suitably employed in such non-thermal applications often cannot be used in thermal ink-jet printing, due to the effect of heating on the ink composition.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,021,802 discloses a thermally reversible sol-gel phase change ink or bubble jet ink. The inks are thermally reversible sol-gels which are gels at ambient temperatures and sols at temperatures between about 40.degree. and 100.degree. C.
A need remains for ink compositions for use in ink-jet printing, particularly thermal ink-jet printing, which do not evidence bleed, as defined herein, and yet which possess relatively long shelf life and other desirable properties of such inks.